


The Fabric of Your Flesh

by songlin



Series: Powerful, Beautiful and Without Regret [3]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Alternate Universe - Werewolf, M/M, Vampire Sherlock, Vampires, Werewolf John, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-13
Updated: 2012-05-13
Packaged: 2017-11-05 06:47:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/403550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/songlin/pseuds/songlin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock doesn't think of John the Wolf as separate from John the Man. He's more like John concentrated and distilled into his essence, good and brave and dangerous.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Fabric of Your Flesh

**Author's Note:**

> Theme: Drumming Song by Florence + The Machine  
> Unbeta'd, as Cin is internet-less after a move. Feel free to leave me angry notes about stupid mistakes I've made in the comments.

After they fight on full moons (or hunt, or run, or sometimes just because it seems nice), John will curl up somewhere near Sherlock and sleep the rest of the night away. Oftentimes Sherlock will have a problem, and will throw himself on the sofa the way he always does when he’s thinking. But instead of allowing him to steeple his fingers under his chin, John will lie down on top of him, nudge his head under Sherlock’s hands and rest it on his chest while Sherlock strokes the fur between his ears. Sometimes Sherlock can be persuaded to watch dreadful reality television while John naps on his lap. Occasionally, Sherlock sleeps too, laying his head on John’s warm flank.

This is good for both of them. When they’re like this, John can hear and feel and smell everything that is happening inside of Sherlock, and Sherlock can do the same to John. It is like this, when they are as different as they ever are, that they are the most alike.

Inevitably, they wake at dawn when John’s body starts folding out from itself. Sherlock complains about John shedding on the sofa and on Sherlock’s dressing gown, and John punches him in the arm before he trudges off for a shower.

Other nights, they are on a case when the full moon rises. On one particularly memorable occasion, Sherlock finds himself kidnapped and locked in a warehouse with a violent vampire-killer who thinks himself a servant of God.

After Mr. Robert Ferguson’s wife and son went over to the side of the bloodsuckers, as Sherlock dryly referrs to himself on occasion, they tried to take baby Ferguson with them. It went wrong, and the baby died. Robert went mad and locked young Jack and the Mrs. outside at sunrise. In the three months since, every Sunday morning a sanguinarian turns up dead somewhere public, a rosary half-buried in their ashes.

Naturally, Sherlock decides to tempt fate. Every Saturday night he goes for strolls through the city, making every effort to look as vampiric as possible. He extends his fangs (which he hates; it is difficult to speak naturally when one’s lateral incisors are twice as long as usual), wears the oldest clothes in his wardrobe, and stalks about the city with John at his side, making a show of being fantastically possessive. If he’s feeling particularly adventurous, he pins John to some brick wall in a back alley and bites down right there for everyone to see. Part of John wants to protest. The other part of him is snarling and raking his nails down Sherlock’s back and, on one memorable occasion, coming in his pants. John _loves_ these Saturday nights.

Until it’s a full moon, and they haven’t seen hide nor hair of the man yet.

“We can’t go out tomorrow night.”

Sherlock pauses, looking mutinous. He is currently armed with a claw glued to the end of a pencil with which he is attempting to scratch the mirror in a compact. “Why not?”

“Are you joking? I’m going to be a bit furry to be showing off your--bloody bite wounds for all to see.”

Sherlock smirks. “Unfortunate, but workable. For all I know he’s been avoiding coming after me because I’m not alone.”

“Which is precisely why I’m reluctant to leave you alone. He’s killed older sanguinarians.”

“Not stronger ones. Not smarter.”

John rubs a hand across his forehead. “Not sure if you’ve realized, but arrogance _can_ trip you up.”

Sherlock shrugs and goes back to scratching at the compact with the claw. “Not that I’ve found.”

“Couldn’t you at least--hang on, is that _my_ claw?”

“Fell out,” Sherlock says, frowning. “Last month.”

John sighs. “Look. If I stay here, and you go running about London like the bloody Vampire Lestat, can you at least _try_ not to get yourself killed?”

“I--”

“For me?”

Sherlock scowls. “Fine.”

Naturally, he nearly gets himself killed.

The noble hunter of things that go “bump” in the night had indeed been waiting for a lone target. Deprived of John’s extra set of senses, Sherlock finds himself caught embarassingly off guard. He feels the sting in the back of his neck for maybe three seconds, just long enough to register what is happening, before he blacks out.

Sherlock wakes up bound to a chair with silver, naked to the waist, in what appears to be some kind of warehouse. There are boxes on all sides, blocking his view of windows and exits. He blinks, trying to gather his senses. The chains around his chest, wrists and ankles burn, distracting him. His fangs are out. It’ll be the physical threat, most likely. Not the most pleasant way for a fellow’s teeth to show, but it’ll do for that extra threatening edge.

“Your friend,” says a voice behind him. “Get tired of you? Or did you finally bleed him dry?”

“Mm, something like that.”

Something cold and metallic presses against the back of his head _(revolver, between ten and fifteen years old, illegal)_. Sherlock goes as still as he can make himself, which is _very_ still indeed.

_Does he know who I am? He must, surely._

“Do you know who I am?” says Ferguson.

“I might as well ask you the same.”

Ferguson barks out a laugh. The gun is withdrawn. Ferguson circles round, keeping the revolver trained. “I don’t really have to say, do I?”

Sherlock pulls a face of mock horror. “Oh no, the scary vampire hunter’s got me. I’m doomed for sure.”

Anger flickers briefly across Ferguson’s face. “I’ve killed older bloodsuckers than you.”

Sherlock arches an eyebrow. “Yes, but none quite like me.”

Ferguson sneers. “I don’t think you’re so special.”

Sherlock smirks. “Oh?” He leans forward incrementally. “Mr. Ferguson, I respect your method. It’s served you well so far. In fact, you’re awfully close to killing me. Bravo. But you’ve made a...hm, call it a minor tactical error.”

Ferguson presses his revolver to Sherlock’s forehead. “What have you done?” he demands. His hands are trembling. Sherlock smells triumph. He smells something else too, circling the exterior of the building, and grins.

“Keep in mind, when stalking a potential target, that he may have in his acquiantance... _allies_...of a particular nature.”

The power in the building shuts off.

Ferguson whirls, blinking furiously. “What the hell was that?”

A window shatters somewhere off to the left. Sherlock winces sympathetically. That’ll be hell to pick out of his fur.

“Hmm,” he muses. “At a guess, that was backup. Have you checked a moon chart lately?”

Right on cue, something growls behind him.

Sherlock, being of a nocturnal nature, can see well enough in the dark to relish the look of shock and horror on Ferguson’s face in the 2.3 seconds before John leaps over the chair--leaps over _Sherlock_ \--and knocks him to the ground.

Ferguson does not scream for long. John likes to go for the throat.

When Ferguson’s twitching has ceased and John is satisfied, he sits back on his haunches, licking his chops. He looks back at Sherlock, unmistakably irritated.

“I didn’t get myself killed, did I?”

John growls.

“Find my coat. My gloves are in the pocket. I can’t get these damned chains off if I can’t _touch_ them.”

John looks at him expectantly.

Sherlock rolls his eyes. _“Please,_ John, will you find my coat and get my gloves out of the pocket.”

John pads off and returns a minute later holding Sherlock’s leather gloves in his teeth. He drops them into Sherlock’s hands where they are bound behind his back.

“Oh, that’s better,” he sighs a few minutes later, when he’s slipped free of the chains. “I’ll phone Lestrade, shall I?”

John is remarkably calm throughout the fetching of the dead spree killer and Sherlock’s usual giving-Lestrade-the-slip maneuvers. During the cab ride home, he sits ramrod-straight in the backseat, not a mean feat for a wolf of his height. It’s not til the door shuts behind them that he whirls round and gives Sherlock a sharp bite to the back of the leg, stalks over to the sofa and flops down across the entirety of it.

Sherlock throws himself into his chair and glares at him. John glares back.

Dawn is less than an hour away. They don’t glare for long.

As soon as John’s finished shuddering himself back into his body, he’s off the sofa and stalking across the room towards Sherlock. He’s just got time to think _he’s the wolf, still, he’s still a beast,_ before John’s straddling his thighs and wrapping his hands around his throat.

Sherlock laughs until John’s fingers tighten. Even then, he’s still grinning, while John’s teeth are bared in a feral snarl. He’s hard already, and conveniently naked, so Sherlock seizes him round the hips and rolls his up.

_He’s so strong like this,_ he thinks, as one of John’s hands reaches down and tears half the buttons off his shirt in trying to get it open.

Sherlock’s clothes end up a wreck, while Sherlock ends up turned round on all fours facing the back of the chair with his hands pinned and three of John’s fingers buried in him all the way.

“Don’t you ever fucking do that,” he growls. _“Never._ You are _mine,_ you can’t _do_ that to me, you can’t send me away so I have to fucking _follow_ you, do you hear me?” The hand around Sherlock’s wrist tightens. _“Do you hear me?”_

“Yes,” Sherlock snaps. “Hurry up.”

John snarls, withdraws his fingers and slaps Sherlock’s thighs further apart.

John gets one arm around Sherlock’s neck, choking off his ability to make any sound at all, and the other at his hips, holding them still so he can fuck him so hard it would bruise if it could.

Sherlock wants to scream, yell, bite, do _something,_ but good, strong, _wonderful_ John won’t let him. He’s trapped completely, imprisoned in John Watson.

_What a perfect way to die,_ he thinks, as he comes with the shout caught in his lungs.

After, John slides off the chair and onto the floor, leaning against the arm.

“I mean it, Sherlock,” he says, when he’s caught his breath. “You’ve got to let me stay, if you’re going to--if there’s that big a chance you could die. I’ve got to be able to stop that.”

Sherlock nods tersely, lips thin. “I will.”

He doesn’t say what he’s thinking, which is _I don’t deserve your loyalty._

John would never agree. At least, Sherlock thinks so. He’d like to keep it that way.


End file.
